Harmadik fejezet

Of man and the machines.

The inhabitants of Faremido.

The Author is compared with the plants.

The reader, already much spoiled as he is by narratives of travel, has perhaps determined, with dissatisfaction and impatience, upon reaching the end of the foregoing chapter, that of its substance he apprehended scarcely anything, not understanding what those wondrous machines and surprising plants might be, which in any case I could set down but in fragments, speaking as I was of such phenomena as, to my knowledge, no writer of travels has hitherto recorded in his journal.

I humbly beg the reader to consider that, on the one hand, in my simple capacity as a surgeon, as I have mentioned, I am no artist of words, and have perhaps expressed myself imperfectly; and on the other, that those phenomena which I described in the second chapter surprised me just as much, and were just as unintelligible in the first moment, when I came face to face with them.

But I ask for patience and trust, modestly referring to my four preceding narratives of travel, in which I have often set down inconceivable phenomena, whose meaning and significance came to light only in the sequel.

In any case it is a great help to the reader if he is acquainted with my four earlier narratives of travel (to Lilliput, to Brobdingnag, to Laputa, and to the country of the Houyhnhnms), which Jonathan Swift prepared for the press.

Still, that I may make the matter shorter, I set down beforehand that lesson which ripened in me later, in the course of my sojourn in Faremido, and which, had the works of the metaphysicians of the twentieth century not corrupted and infected me, I ought to have understood long, long ago, before Faremido, so that the things I experienced in this country should not have surprised me.

It may be established that when men first appeared upon the earth, there were as yet no machines, no art and no science.

Then everything that men made sprang from natural necessity: they put on clothing because it was cold; they made an axe that they might the more easily cut the wood.

Thereafter came the sciences and the arts, whose aim, is it not so, was all this: to assist man in his heavy labors, and in part to supplement the notions and images we form of the phenomena we perceive.

For the lifting of heavy objects they devised the pulley; for the more exact and thorough knowledge of the phenomena seen, they devised drawing and writing.

After centuries, science and art became, as was natural, ever more perfect; man was aided in his work by splendid machines, which multiplied every possibility; and the temporal and spatial phenomena, hastily perceived, were fixed and displayed in their full significance by ever more perfect statues, paintings, and poetical works.

At last we came so far that the machines not only assisted man in all his affairs and multiplied his strength, but by themselves performed the work far more perfectly than our frail human body could ever have performed it.

So too the arts: pictures, statues, written works, musical works expressed the manifestations of life, the form, the color, the story, the feeling, with such perfection that real life lagged far behind them in invention, in beauty, in expressive power.

What followed from this?

Machines and works surpassed man: they became more perfect, and soon we had come to this, that if man wished to be perfect he was constrained to imitate the machines and the works, which had once imitated man.

Upon the forming of our character the greatest influence was our culture, novels, dramas, works.

Our forms were prescribed to us by art.

Once, being in Budapest, I saw a confectioner's shop that called itself an "automat": one dropped a kreutzer in at the top, whereupon sweets came out at an opening.

Within this automat there sat a man; into his hand the money fell, and it was he who pushed the sweets out at the opening.

This man had unwittingly discovered that men trust the machines more than they trust one another, and by a cunning artifice sought to make it believed that he was a machine.

Men had come so far that for a painting representing a naked woman they gave ten times as much as for the woman who had served the painter as model; to the human being they did not render that respect which was due to its imitated, reconstructed copy.

I remember what sincere indignation it aroused in me, shortly before my voyage to Faremido, when the barbarous Germans began to bombard the cathedral of Reims; while at the same time I only cursorily noted to myself how many had fallen victim to that engagement.

But indeed we all know too how much more it means, how much greater enthusiasm is aroused by the news that we have captured one or two of the enemy's ships or five or six of his guns, than that we have succeeded in destroying five or six thousand of his men; five guns are worth as much to us as five thousand men, and to them it is a loss of the same magnitude.

Had I but then thought soberly upon this, I should not have had to learn so much to my own cost in Faremido.

I should have understood that man has always esteemed the thing he created above himself, and in all his creation strove to create himself anew, again and more perfectly, that he might then cease to be, like the superfluous clay mold into which the metal has been poured.

I ought to have understood this even then, when the moving picture was invented, and I observed how much more gladly men went to the moving-picture theater, where they saw but the image, cast upon a wall, of the very same actor whom, for the same money, they might have seen in living reality upon the antiquated stage.

Truly, severally, in parts and in whole, man had from the very beginning desired a being more perfect than himself: for this were needed the microscope and the telescope, the photograph and the X-ray, the automobile and the flying-machine.

I say, had I thought all this out soberly and understood it, I might have aroused a greater respect and esteem for my fervently beloved country in the eyes of the inhabitants of Faremido.

They would have perceived that the wonder which fairly stupefied me when, at the end of the forest path, that resplendent edifice opened before me, that this wonder in itself already proved that, in my frail human condition, I was nonetheless worthy to live among them, and perhaps one day to become like them.

But I, prejudiced and foolish, long clung to the supposition that such a work could have been brought forth only by a human hand.

There I stood, and, giddy, looked about me on every side: whereupon one of the machines standing before the hall stirred, and, lightly bounding, drew near to me.

I recognized the machine that had brought me hither and had left me alone upon the farther bank of the river.

It sounded the same musical measure; and of the other machines too several stirred and came over.

They stood about me, and a veritable concert sounded around me: the machines made music.

I began to grow uneasy that nowhere did I see a man of flesh and blood; at the same time nature too began to demand her rights, and I felt hunger and weariness.

In the hope that I might after all make myself understood, I spoke in divers tongues, commending myself to their mercy and their understanding.

But as only musical tones ever answered, I began again to attend, and, distinguishing among the tones a few measures that recurred several times, I repeated these before them.

At such times there fell, as if in surprise, a silence; then, stretching out their metal arms toward one another, they seemed to take counsel.

Looking about me in alarm, I perceived that they were not all alike: there were among them winged ones and ones without wings; there were square-headed and round-headed ones, of metals of divers colors; but in their bearing they resembled one another, and in this also, that every one of them was an intricate and infinitely fine, precise mechanism.

While I mused upon this, a metal arm reached out toward me and lifted me into the air: I espied a great glass lens, which something held above my head; behind the glass lens, glittering and attentive, it was as though a giant eye shone down upon me.

The arm that had raised me moved and slid my head slowly to and fro; I had the uncomfortable feeling of being observed, as the beetle-collector observes some curious grub beneath his magnifying glass.

Afterward they let me go again and set me down upon the ground.

Then that winged machine which had brought me hither took me by the hand and began to lead me, and this was as when a father teaches his little child to walk: the machine paced slowly and warily beside me; where the way was rougher it lifted its wheels, and on smoother ground it rolled slowly and cautiously.

Meanwhile it often turned its golden metal head down toward me, and from its shining eyes a bluish light streamed down upon me; then it began to sing, and now I distinctly felt that with these tones it was speaking to me, and that in this country they speak thus, with musical tones, and that words are composed of musical tones.

Having understood this, I endeavored to make it understand in turn that I wished to learn this language; pointing toward the palace, I signified that I desired to know what it was called.

It grasped at once what I wanted; it uttered a few tones: mi, fa, re, which I at once repeated.

Visibly it rejoiced, and now itself began to point out the objects, marking the name of each, while I repeated the tones.

It pointed to itself and sang this: sol-la-si.

Then with a broad gesture it indicated the whole horizon, and made music thus: fa, re, mi, do, which I had already heard when it brought me hither.

Thus I learned that the name of the country is: Faremido.